As someone who likes to write more words than is strictly necessary ... that was too much. I recall here (Australia) in the 1990's as early-gen analog phones w

As someone who likes to write more words than is strictly necessary ... that was too much. I recall here (Australia) in the 1990's as early-gen analog phones were becoming popular, and consequently so too the theft of same, much public hand-wringing about why the 2 or 3 domestic telcos steadfastly refused to offer a service to disable stolen handsets. The popular theory was that telcos weren't incentivised to do so -- the thief (or whoever they offloaded the handset to) was likely to buy a SIM, and the victim was likely to buy a new phone and a new SIM. If they (telco) disabled a handset, they were disabling a potential (new) long-term customer. The question continues to come up with all kinds of contemporary doodads that may be the target of theft - anything with a unique ID that's hard to modify and that is likely going to be connected to the internet at some point. Prima facie these seem like very easy wins for vendors and for law enforcement to a) block, and/or b) track. Presumably the commercials of such an arrangement are not in the original purchaser's favour.